A random photograph & blog every three days about some site or situation in Staffordshire, including Stoke-on-Trent.
Part of the 'City Daily Photo' international family of photo-bloggers.

Wednesday, 24 July 2013

'Castle' allowed to decay

This Victorian castle-style building is a really attractive work, on the fringes of Wombourne. It's hard to believe that it is (or was...) a pumping station, in which two steam engines pumped up water from boreholes which went deep into the ground underneath it.

After The Bratch Pumping Station was supplanted by a new system, a group of enthusiasts, The Friends Of The Bratch, was given the chance to maintain the building and the steam-engines, which they lovingly did, holding a number of open-days along the way.... until 2010, when, for no reason I can find, the owners, Severn-Trent Water, withdrew their permission.The enthusiasts are still, to this day, understandably bitter.

Meanwhile, the empty building suffers from ingress from pigeons, the engines are no longer maintained, and tree-foliage has been allowed to grow along the front to the property so that it is no longer easy to see the building from the road.

Seems hard to think why it should be so allowed to decline when there are volunteers who would take it on.